December 27, 2016

December Daily - The Last Pages

Christmas has come and gone and, since I only document through Christmas Day in my December Daily, I've reached the end of my album for this year.

Because of where I'd left off in my album and how I was planning to make my spread for Christmas Eve, I needed to fill a full 6x8 page for the right side of the album. I had downloaded a fun and free printable from Diane (dearlydee) from her blog here. I printed it on a laser printer and then ran it through a laminator several times with gold foil.

I added some red and white snowflake washi at the top and bottom to make the page coordinate with the one opposite it in my album.

For Christmas Eve, I added a photo of my daughters with their grandparents onto one of my pre-made foundation pages. For the opposite page, I added a collage of four photos from that night and wrote my journaling on a 3x4 card. Here's how the two pages look together:

The reverse side documents Christmas Day and is the final page in the album. I just added a photo of the four of us to one of the pocket cards.

I then used one of the main kit's 4x6 cards to make a pocket on the inside cover of the album. I attached the card with dimensional adhesive and used a circle punch to make the cut-out at the top.

I printed several photos that I thought really captured the essence of the day, wrote a bullet list of our Christmas Day highlights on one of the 3x4 cards, and slipped everything into the pocket.

Here's a little peek at the contents of the pocket:

And it's done! I've never used a binder and pocket pages for my December Daily before. I'm happy with how it turned out. I think the pockets encouraged me to tell fuller stories and in some cases include several more photos to accompany those stories.

I like the added dimension of the tabs and ribbons sticking out of the pages and from the items I adhered to the front and back covers -

My album is definitely full but not stuffed -

Earlier in the month, I'd completed a spreadintended to remind me to look for the magical moments of the season. During the month I was definitely more aware of those special moments and I added photos and journaling to the envelope that was included in the spread. I took notes and photos as I was inspired and then added them in a couple batches as I had time. (As a side note: our December seemed to be a very gray month and that, coupled with limited daylight hours, made photographing my pages a little difficult as you can see by some of my photos.)

I added a few "filler" pages to the album along the way. I enjoyed making something that was fun and creative without the pressure of fitting in a story or photos. I like the break that these filler pages provide between the stories and photos.

As much as I love this project, I'm happy to have it completed and I'm ready to focus on documenting other stories now. I'm looking forward to working with non-holiday colors too! How about you - what are you excited about documenting next?